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Updated: June 28, 2025
The springy, ten-foot gangplank bridged the gap to the shore. More than thirty shanty-boats and gasolene cruisers were moored along that bank, and from nearly every one peered sharp eyes, taking a look at the newcomers. "Hello, Terabon!" someone hailed, and the newspaper man turned, surprised.
Rasba, frankly curious about the man who wrote for newspapers for a living, listened to accounts of an odd and entertaining occupation. He asked about the Palura shooting which everyone was talking about, and when Terabon described it as he had witnessed it, Rasba shook his head. "Now they'll close up that big market of sin?" he asked. "They've all scattered around."
The little cabin-boat, almost lost to view astern, rapidly gained, and as they ran down Beef Island chute, where the current is slow, they were overtaken. "Sho!" Parson Rasba cried aloud, "hit's Missy Carline, Missy Nelia, shore as I'm borned!" Terabon had known it for half an hour. He had been noticing river details, and he could not fail to recognize that little boat.
The light under the clouds at the horizon extended through 90 degrees of the compass, and in the centre of the bright greenish flare there was a compact, black, apparently solid mass from which streaks of lightning constantly exuded on all sides. For a minute Terabon stared, cold chills goose-pimpling his flesh. Then he cried: "Cyclone, Parson! Get ready!"
"Oh, he is, all right, he's a familiar type here on the river. He's the kind of a sport who hunts men, Up-the-Bankers and game of that kind. He's a very successful hunter, too " "He said we'd hunt wild geese. We went up Obion River, and had lots of fun, and he said he'd help he'd help " "Find your wife?" "Yes, sir." Carline was abject. Terabon, however, was caught wordless.
He had trusted to his aloofness, his place as a newspaper man, and his frankness, to rescue Carline, and he had brought him away. "You're all righ now," Terabon suggested. "I guess you've had your lesson." "A whole book full of them!" Carline cried. "I owe you something an apology, and my thanks! Where are we going?" "I was taking you down to a Memphis hospital, or to Mendova "
"I've a wounded man here who has a doctor with him. If he goes up to the hospital or stays with us, I'll be glad to have you for your help and company." "I'm in luck." Terabon laughed with relief. Just that way the Mississippi River's narrow channel brought the River Prophet and the river reporter together.
They were not the important things, those minute words and facts and points; no, indeed. At last Terabon knew that most important fact of all that it was the emotions that counted. As a mere spectator, he could never hope to know the Mississippi, to describe and write it truly; the river had forced him into the activities of the river life, and had done him by that act its finest service.
The combination of La Salle's last adventure and the Mississippi flood caught the fancy of the newspaper man. "Shall I ever get out there?" Terabon asked himself. His dream was not of reporting wars, not of exploring Africa, not of interviewing kings and making presidents in a national convention. Far from it!
It was warm, with the slight tang of autumn, and the yellow leaves were fluttering down; squirrels were barking, and a flock of geese, so high in the air that they sparkled, in the sunshine, were gossiping, and the music of their voices rained upon the river surface as upon a sounding board. Terabon was approaching Donaldson's Point, Winchester Chute, Island No. 10, and New Madrid.
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